My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

tough guy poetry and manly stories of loneliness
all contents copyright Jon Rolston 2004, 2005, 2006

August 18, 2008

ROBOUTIQUE  

A 1974 classic of American Literature, yours for two dollars, plus shipping and handling. O.J. went to City College, where I myself took Yoga, Afro Haitian Dance and Hip Hop Dance for my physical education requirement.

five bucks. No questions.

MATCHBOOKS!

You got ten bucks kickin’ around? Wanna new hobby? I got just the thing for ya. Matchbook collecting.

Hold on, I know what you’re thinking. You’re not a smoker. Or, you are a smoker and you are partial to lighters. That’s not what this hobby is about. This is an emerging hobby, a small unbeaten track off the path of ephemera. You aren’t collecting the matches, but the art that adorns the outside of the matchbooks. Great advertising stuff here. And it gives you a real sense of the past.

Let me lay a little foundation for you.

Did you know the first paper match was invented in 1826? It’s true. Some English guy figured out how to pack a tiny bit of explosive on the end of a stick. It wasn’t until 1892 that some other genius decided to cram a bunch in a little booklet. in 1896 someone came up with the idea to put a striking surface on the matchbook. But this guy put it inside the matchbook. A great way to cause a minor explosion. It didn’t take long before they decided to put the strike plate on the outside, but they put it on the front of the match book.

Take a look at a matchbook you might have handy. The striker is on the back now. Can you believe it wasn’t until 1965 they decided it was safer to light your match away from the other match heads? It’s always fascinating to realize how slow progress is. We’re basically slightly sophisticated cavemen.

What I have to offer the interested party is over 300 rear striker matchbooks, most in pristine shape. Of course these rear strikers aren’t from the Golden Age of Matchbook art and don’t command the high prices of something from the 30′ 40′s or 50′s, but you’re just getting started.

Think of this as an easy way to start your retirement fund. Social Security isn’t gonna do much for you. But a few thousand matchbooks won’t take up much space and if you’re smart, you’ll be able to cash in to the tune of 1000 times the value of your investment. Just wait 40 years!

Don’t hesitate, send me $10 bucks and some money to cover shipping and start a new hobby today!

Back to School Special $35.00

Let’s get back to school in a rad dog fashion. This mega awesome binder is from the late ’80′s, and what is that antique on the right? You got it, an early 80′s binder from the same company. I’m throwing in this piece of personal history for your school child to cherish: my ruler from middle school. It is an authentic bit of Peanuts licensed merchandise, copyright date of 1965. I wasn’t in grade school till the 1970′s, but this one is old. And it used to be mine.

I’m not gonna stop there. I have a pen from Stanford University’s college radio station, KZSU 90.1 fm. This promo pen has the old area code of 415, so you know it is from the early 1990′s before the dot com boom. After that 415 was strictly San Francisco, and the Peninsula became 650. So there’s too much history in this one back to school lot to really keep from passing out.

When you wake up and get back on your feet, leave a message in the comments if you got serious interest and I’ll ship it to you. If you think I’m crazy to ask that much, do a quick ebay search on Rad Dog and then you’ll thank me for selling this stuff so cheap.








American Spirit Notebook Camel Notebook Parliment Lights Notebook Marlboro Medium Notebook
Collect all the great colors and flavors of this great natural smoke! Camel, Camel Light, even non-filtered, we have them all! Maybe you smoke one of the more unique brands. Be proud! Let us know, we’ll get it to you. We got the hard packs and soft packs too. In all the varieties. Grab a carton!
 
              $5.00              $5.00       $5.00        $5.00

            These notbooks are hand made and bound with heavy duty staples. They contain about thirty plain white pages. I will put a title page in with your name in the box, like the sample below. I would love to hear special requests as far as paper color, cover material and binding options.
 
. this sucks so bad. I’ll try again tomorrow. I used a copy machine to send the image to my computer, and turned it from adobe file to photoshop to dreamweaver, and I still have trouble understanding my hotmail account, so it could be worse.
 
 

3 Comments

  1. Those are amazing. If you find 2 car license plates in your travels, I would LOVE a note book with license plate covers….

    Comment by Zippy — April 2, 2008 @ 5:58 am

  2. i used to pilfer books of matches, his benchmarks from travel, personal histories and the fuel of anecdotes from my fathers personal collection while he traveled the world as a commercial pilot. it was extraordinarily satisfying. i will donate the matchbook collection to him. probably accidentally the day after he dies and has no need to remember anything. not that he could from the false record of books planted as placekeepers.

    Comment by sandy — September 1, 2008 @ 5:44 pm

  3. I’ll send these along to him. He’ll think he’s lost his mind when he can’t remember any of these places. I loved your comment!

    Comment by Rolston — September 2, 2008 @ 8:06 pm

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